The IRU showcased its Global Taxi Network (GTN), the largest and fastest growing taxi service quality network with 160,000 taxis worldwide, to industry leaders at Taxiworld Turkey. It encouraged leading taxi app providers from the Black Sea region to join the GTN, thus promoting safe, legal and high quality taxi services to customers, embracing the latest smartphone technology in full respect of applicable regulations. Founding GTN partner, taxi.eu, notably announced its plans to expand to Turkey in early March starting in Istanbul.

The IRU welcomes the letter sent from European Parliament Transport & Tourism Committee Chair and MEP, Michael Cramer, to Commissioner for Transport, Violeta Bulc, regarding ride-sharing service companies that connect passengers with drivers of unlicensed private vehicles.

The IRU and European Transport Workers’ Federation (ETF) have called on the European Commission to consider, as a first step, proposing an access to the profession regime for taxis and hire cars with driver in Europe, taking into account the sector’s specific operational and service environment.

European Parliament Transport Coordinators, Ismail Ertug, MEP, and Wim van de Camp, MEP, have joined the European Citizens’ Mobility Forum (ECMF) as active members to support the overarching objective of the Forum in doubling the use of collective passenger land transport in the EU by 2025. The new Coordinators join founding ECMF member and Transport Coordinator, Gesine Meissner, MEP, to further strengthen political representation in the Forum.

The ECMF counts on the political expertise of Mr Ertug, Mr van de Camp, and existing members, to promote the Forum’s objectives and ensure that ‘doubling’ is formally adopted as a policy objective by the European Commission and that the ECMF’s policy recommendations are fully implemented.

Members of the Business 20 (B20) Trade Task Force, which includes the IRU, came to an overall consensus on the need to produce few, focused, concrete, actionable recommendations on how to generate trade growth to the Group of Twenty (G20) political leaders at a kick-off meeting moderated by Coordinating Chair, Güler Sabancı. To this end, the IRU recommended that the most practical, actionable recommendation to allow G20 countries to effectively implement the key objectives of the WTO Bali trade facilitation agreement would be for all G20 countries to implement the global, intermodal UN trade facilitation and security instrument, the TIR Convention.

IRU welcomes new European Guidelines on cargo securing for road transport

The IRU is pleased to announce the publication of new European Guidelines on Cargo Securing for Road Transport, which provide basic practical advice and instructions to all stakeholders involved in loading, unloading and cargo securing, including carriers and shippers. Similar to the IRU International Guidelines, these EU Guidelines include examples of different types of goods being secured, such as vehicles or palletised goods.

Available in 22 languages, the European Guidelines will also be useful to enforcement bodies performing inspections in accordance with the European Directive on the technical roadside inspection of the roadworthiness of commercial vehicles (2014/47/EU).

Founding partner of the IRU Global Taxi Network (GTN), eCab, and Unione dei Radiotaxi d’Italia (URI), signed a mutual agreement to ensure that passengers can book safe, secure, high quality and legal taxi trips through an additional 10,000 taxis in 25 major Italian cities, directly from the eCab smartphone app. The expansion into Italy will allow mobility users access to more than 160,000 taxis on 3 continents through the GTN, making it the largest and fastest growing network of taxi industry federations and taxi app providers.

IRU and ECO sign 5-year Action Plan for Cooperation and Transit Development

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IRU Secretary General, Umberto de Pretto, and Economic Cooperation Organization (ECO) Director for Transport and Communication, Mohsen Esperi, today signed a 5-year Action Plan for Cooperation and Transit Development. This follows an IRU-ECO Memorandum of Understanding signed in 2008, which led to fruitful collaboration on the 2010 Silk Road Caravan, 2011 ECO Regular Monitoring of Trucks (NELTI-3), joint conferences in 2011, 2012 and 2014, collaboration on ECO Corridors, a joint seminar in Afghanistan and TIR workshops in Pakistan.

The Action Plan aims to facilitate international road transport, thus increasing economic development and social progress in the ECO region and beyond. It will notably assist in Pakistan’s accession to TIR and practical implementation, as well as capacity building activities allowing Afghanistan to better benefit from TIR.

IRU Secretary General, Umberto de Pretto and Deputy Minister for Economy and Finance and President of the Islamic Republic of Iran Customs Administration (IRICA), H.E. Masoud Karbasian, discussed the increasing cooperation between Iran and the IRU, notably their satisfaction at the progress in implementing a Memorandum of Understanding signed in January 2014 between IRICA, IRU and the Iran Chamber of Commerce, Industries, Mines & Agriculture (ICCIMA).

Mr Karbasian expressed Iran’s determination to implement the IRU-UNECE eTIR Pilot project with Turkey and emphasised that Pakistan and China`s accession to TIR in the near future, along with the implementation of TIR in the United Arab Emirates, will further facilitate transport and trade in the region. He expressed that Iran is ready to promote TIR, including intermodal TIR transport, and to contribute to capacity building for neighbouring countries in cooperation with the IRU.

The IRU welcomes Hungary authorities’ decision to postpone the enforcement of its Electronic Public Road Trade Control System (EKAER) until the beginning of March 2015. Since 1 January, consignors and consignees established in Hungary have been required to register and report all movement of goods between Hungary and other EU Member States through EKAER.

The IRU opposes the current system, which puts transport operators at risk of indirect sanctions for the possible failures of consignors and consignees to complete the required processes. It hopes this postponement will allow authorities and relevant actors in the supply chain to thoroughly review and improve the system.